I can't speak. Can't breathe. Can't do anything but stand there in my kitchen, holding a mug of coffee with trembling hands while the world shifts beneath my feet.
"They've obviously got some grudge against the organization," Brynn continues, oblivious to my silence. "Probably trying to get back at someone. The whole thing reads like fan fiction written by someone who's never actually stepped foot in an arena. I swear, these gossip vultures get more desperate every—"
She stops. The silence stretches between us, thick with unspoken realization.
"Sloane?" Her voice changes, the amusement bleeding out of it. "That's... funny, right? Just some weird coincidence they happened to describe someone who sounds vaguely like you?"
I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. The kitchen tilts around me.
"Sloane, why aren't you saying anything?"
The question hangs in the air like an accusation. I can hear her breathing on the other end, can practically feel hermind working, connecting dots I've been so careful to keep scattered.
"Wait." Her voice drops to a whisper. "Wait, wait, wait. Sloane. Tell me this isn't... tell me you're not..."
"Brynn—"
"Oh my god." The words explode out of her with devastating certainty. "Oh my god, Sloane. It's not a coincidence, is it? It's you. It's you and Sullivan."
My throat closes completely.
"How long?" Her voice cracks, but there's something softer underneath the shock. "How long have you been carrying this alone?"
"I wasn't—I didn't—"
"Sloane." The word comes out gentler now, though I can hear her struggling to process. "I'm your best friend. I tell you everything. Every stupid date, every professional crisis, every thought in my head, and you've been—God, you must have been dying keeping this to yourself. With Sullivan?"
Tears burn behind my eyes, hot and sharp—not from guilt, but from humiliation. This is exactly what I was trying to avoid. All I can hear in her voice is the pity, the shock, the story she's already writing in her head.
"Okay, wow. I'm reeling here." Her breath catches, and I can practically hear her mind spinning. "But we'll figure this out. We always do. Jesus Christ, Sloane, do you have any idea what this could cost you? What it will cost you when people find out?" Her voice shifts into protective mode, the journalist in her already calculating threats. "You've worked so hard to prove you belong in that boys' club, and if this gets out wrong—"
"Now what?" The words tear out of me, raw with months of suppressed fear. "Now I'm just another woman who couldn't keep her legs closed? Is that what you think?"
"No—God, no, that's not what I meant. I'm sorry." Her voice breaks with fierce protectiveness. "That's what they'll think. That's the story they'll tell. And you know it. That's why you've been terrified, isn't it?"
The silence that follows is brutal. We both know she's right.
"Sloane," she whispers, and I can hear the tears in her voice now, but also something stronger. "What are you going to do? Because whatever it is, I'm with you."
The coffee mug slips from my fingers. It shatters against the hardwood, the sound echoing in the sudden, cold silence. I don't even register the hot coffee splashing across my legs. I just... stare.
Vivian's voice echoes in my head:ambitious, always laced with disdain. A subtle way of saying manipulative. Opportunistic.
My chest tightens. The apartment goes cold.
The sound distorts—Brynn's voice underwater, the world suddenly muffled.
This isn't just gossip. This is a strike.
Someone chose those words. Carefully. Just cryptic enough to maintain plausible deniability. But clear enough for everyone else to guess.
It paints me as everything I've spent my entire career proving I'm not: a distraction. A manipulator. A woman using a man to climb.
Just like they did to Sarah.
"Sloane? Sloane, are you okay?" Brynn's voice cuts through my spiral, all the hurt replaced by immediateconcern. The professional podcaster replaced by the friend who just watched me shatter.
"It was Vivian," I breathe. "She fed them this story."
